Rep. Andrea Salinas Calls out Trump Admin’s Affordability Crisis for Harming Working Mothers and their Families

Click hereto watch Rep. Salinas' full remarks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today,U.S. Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (OR-06) heard from mothers about the strain of President Trump's affordability crisis and what it would mean for their families to cap child care at 7% of their income. Ahead of Mother's Day, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director of MomsRising; Julie Groce, middle school math teacher and mother; Samantha Shepherd, child care director and mother; and Nicole Varma, nonprofit worker and mother shared their real experiences of working, raising children, and balancing the family budget.

A transcript of Salinas' remarks is available below:

REP. SALINAS: Thank you so much to all of you for being here. What your stories have done to me - it has completely angered me, because you are all working your tails off, for yourselves, for your families, your kids, for those you serve in the community. It is exemplary that you are even here today. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I would be dropping words that [your five-year-old daughter] Zoie would not want to hear right now. I also heard from all of you that this is a choice. This is a choice that we are making to either fund a war or fund childcare and healthcare, and you see it and you recognize it. And thank you, because I feel the same way. And that you are all making sacrifices, but it still feels like the cards are stacked against you. That is not okay. You're working too darn hard to be in this situation right now. So you are correct. This is a matter of chosen policy, and we can reverse that right now. So I've been doing my own little affordability crisis tour in my district, and I've been talking to families just like yours. If we limited childcare costs in this country to only 7% of your income, and we ensured that the childcare facilities could stay open, could get living wages, could provide for their families, how would that change your family's economic stability and your plans for the future?

GROCE: You just described something really close to utopia right there. Like honestly, when we waited until my mid-30s to have Adam, then we got into childcare, and we were like, well, we can't do this, we have to wait till he's out of childcare. Because then we started thinking like, there's no possible way we could pay three mortgage payments, no possible way. And then in the future of college, there's no possible way we can spend that much money for two college educations at the same time. But then, after waiting, it - the window closed. So like, if that was what I was living through, then we would have been able to have a different choice. The choice of having a second child would have been way more feasible, and it probably would have happened. That sounds great.

VARMA: Yeah, I agree. Because before I had kids, my vision was that we were going to have experiences together and travel. I live in Orlando, and I can't even afford to go take them to Disney. My oldest didn't even know it existed until he was six. And it means that, like, what the proposal you were talking about, it means that we can go with the doctor and immediately call all the specialists that we were referred to, and not have to use a spreadsheet to track which payroll we're going to be able to pay - afford the copays and the tests. This past Friday, I scheduled my oldest for an MRI, and I'm just waiting to find out what the out-of-pocket estimate is going to be, and hope that we can afford both to find out what's wrong and have money to treat it. And so those are the kinds of things we'll be able to do - would be able to do is - you know, find out what's wrong and treat it at the same time.

REP. SALINAS: Thank you.

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